On Evil and Suffering

    Before I begin, I feel that I should say that this subject above all others is one I wrestle with in my own walk with God. If I were to go into greater detail than I am going to, I would end up with a book. There are already many of those, written by better authors than myself, available to the interested reader. My hope, though, is that it encourages discussion and can expand into greater dialogue, so if you have anything to say please comment!  I have a feeling that many people suppose Christians to live in willful ignorance of the issue of evil and suffering, but from my experience many people of faith struggle with it. I don't know how many times I've said to myself, "If I were God, this never would've been allowed to happen." I think, though, that there are a lot of people on this planet who are glad I am not God, as I am that none of you are!
      In order to address the problem of evil, I need to go into the question of purpose. I don't think it is possible to have one without the other. As a Christian, I believe that we were all created with the purpose of relationship with God. We all have within us the potential to love and, unless we were automatons, the potential to hate. I believe that one of the things that makes love true is the choice involved in the action. How much value is there in a kiss if it is merely given on command? Likewise, we are each endowed with the ability to do good by each other, which is in its essence love, and inversely to do wrong by each other.
     Is the law of free will a cop-out? Consider then a God who, when it sees that you are about to commit some wrong, any "violation of purpose", immediately interjects. It could do so, I suppose, in one of two ways. Either the laws of nature would be altered to render your action inconsequential, your desired outcome nullified, or it would act punitively and cause you some harm to make you realign to your purpose. Isn't that a bit like trying to program a robot? If it does what you don't want it too, you go in and change the program and "Voila!" anomaly solved. Now this robot is like every other, no worries, and no harm done. But what happens in the heart? Nothing. Our love would not be of any consequence at all, as we would have no choice in the matter whatsoever. There is a third way that allows for a change in the heart, and that is to speak directly to you on the morality of what you are about to do. This is what most of us call "Conscience." Christians believe that the conscience is the innate moral law that is planted deep within each of us. This is God's way of telling us the right choice to make, and still giving us the freedom to choose.
       It is this choice which we are each of us gifted to make, dozens of times a day, and some of us make the wrong choice in a much more destructive way than others. Instead of Love we choose Enmity. Instead of Peace, we choose War. It is in the fallen nature of mankind (see Genesis 3) to make whatever choice our animal selves see will best suit us, personally. The story of the forbidden fruit is one of man choosing to define right and wrong for himself. Some people take issue with the test of obedience administered to Adam and Eve, but the entire garden of Eden, the whole of earthly paradise, was there for the taking except for this one restriction; being the necessary icon of real love of the creature for the creator. The choice had to be there in order for our relationship with God (for which, as I said, we were created) to be a real one. As such, when the choice was made to transgress this boundary, it changed the nature of our relationship with God. We always have a choice, and while that may lead to evil people and atrocities of horrific scale, it also leads to great people and the great harmony that can be achieved among us through love.
   This is where I need to tie in the problem of suffering. The question goes something like this: "How can I believe in a God of love when there is so much pointless pain and suffering in the world?" In order for this question to remain unanswerable, except that "there can't be one", there are two presuppositions we must hold to. First, that we humans can see the universe from the point of view of the Almighty, seeing any and all possible purposes,  and second, that there is no afterlife or eternal existence of any kind. I personally cannot say that just because I don't see something, it doesn't exist, or that I am entitled to the perception thereof, if it does.
       The important thing for me is that, while I do not have the answer for why suffering is permitted in the world, I do know what the answer is not. The answer is not that God is distant from it. As a Christian, I believe that God actually came to us and suffered with us as a man. During his ministry, Jesus Christ experienced  homelessness, was rejected by the people of his own town, grieved for the death of his close friend, was persecuted by the religious leaders of his day, and ultimately he was scourged, mocked, and publicly hung to die naked and nailed to a piece of wood by his hands and feet. If you can think of anything more violating, degrading, or more worthy of the term "suffering" than that, you have a very good imagination.
   My point is that from the Christian perspective, God has suffered and he knows what it is to suffer intimately. He knows what it is to dread death, and to experience injustice. No, it does not provide me with a reason for the mass shootings, natural disasters, and diseases that plague our world and seem to increase in frequency as time goes by. These kinds of events haunt me regardless of my worldview. but I am assured in the resurrection of Christ (the quintessential innocent sufferer) that all injustice and harm will be set right.

Hopefully you are engaged enough to want to participate in discussion. There are many more points to make, but I want to keep things fairly concise. I know there's a lot more I could've said, but I would love to know what you think! I know there are a lot of specifically Christian viewpoints laid out here, but like I said in my introduction it is the lens through which I see things. So comment below!